New traffic report: Lake Otis better, other city routes mixed

Transportation planners recently produced a new report on commute times for various routes across the city.

The biggest news: The time it takes to drive the length of Lake Otis Parkway during evening rush hour dropped dramatically from 2006 to 2010, from nearly 20 minutes to 14.

That's about the same as commute times from 12 years ago, recorded in a 1998 study.

"It's amazing with all the development," such as medical buildings along Lake Otis, said Jon Spring, a traffic consultant. "We've achieved a decade's worth of relief."

Spring is in charge of updating Anchorage's Metropolitan Transportation Plan out to the year 2035. It will be approved in coming months by AMATS, the joint city-state committee that decides how to spend much of the federal road money in Anchorage.

Apart from Lake Otis, evening rush hour travel times for most of nine major commute routes studied changed only modestly from the last study in 2006 to 2010 -- less than three minutes' difference, for better or worse.

Despite chokepoints that slow traffic down -- like 36th Avenue and the Seward Highway -- Anchorage is not as congested as lots of other cities our size, said the report. Information on other cities, including Eugene and Salem, Ore.; Little Rock, Ark.; Boulder, Colo.; Corpus Christi, Tex., and a number of other places came from the Texas Transportation Institute.

A steady diet of road improvements may explain our relative success, says the Anchorage report.

Lake Otis showed so much improvement, said Spring, because of lanes added to the once notoriously jammed-up Lake Otis and Tudor Road intersection, and expansion of nearby roads: Elmore Road from Tudor to Abbott, Dowling Road eastward, and the new Martin Luther King Avenue in the same vicinity.

Evening rush hour from 4-6 p.m. is generally the slowest time to get anywhere.

To find out how long it takes on different routes, the city traffic department sent out staffers last September, October and November to drive the routes, going the same speed as other motorists and recording times along the way.

They drove the routes from either end multiple times.

Other roads with faster commutes now: The Glenn Highway to the Artillery Road (Eagle River) exit, DeBarr Road, and C Street.

The Seward Highway and Northern Lights and Benson Boulevards took about as long to traverse last year as in 2006.

Minnesota Parkway, including the section merged with O'Malley Road, now takes more than five minutes longer. Dimond Boulevard is more than a minute slower, and has been slowing down ever since the 1998 study. Tudor Road is about 1 1/2 minutes slower.

Dimond drivers are losing speed due to rapid retail growth along the road, says the report.

Similarly, the slight Tudor Road slowdown despite improvements at Lake Otis and Tudor may have resulted from commercial and office growth in Midtown, says the report.

The Glenn, now more than two minutes faster between C and the Eagle River exit, benefited from getting rid of stoplights at the Bragaw Street intersection, for one thing.

This winter, commuters from the Valley to Anchorage are looking forward to 300 new street lights from South Birchwood to Eklutna, thanks to $12 million in federal stimulus funds.

They'll be lit soon, said state Department of Transportation spokesman Rick Feller, himself a Valley commuter.

"It gives us nearly continuous highway lighting from Anchorage to the Valley," he said. "Traffic flows faster and more safely. People just feel more comfortable."

Feller's been making the commute since 1980. It used to take well over an hour to get from Wasilla to Midtown, he said. Now he makes it to DOT headquarters off International Airport Road in 55 minutes.

Lighting, added lanes across the hay flats, taking out the stoplights and putting a freeway-type interchange at the Glenn-Parks Highway intersection -- they've all helped, said Feller.

Commuters and planners have more ideas for the Glenn and Seward Highways.

Spring said frequently accidents or disabled cars slow down Glenn commuters, so in the long-range plan, planners will recommend faster responses to accidents -- stationing a tow truck on the highway, for example.

The Daily News asked readers, on adn.com and our Facebook and Twitter feeds, about their own commutes, whether they've seen changes and where the trouble spots are. There was no shortage of opinions.

Commuter Jonathan King, who drives from his South Anchorage home near Southport Drive to work downtown, said in an email that the trip to work takes 12 1/2 minutes, and the ride home takes about 20 minutes.

"I think it takes longer at night because traffic is more concentrated at night than it is in the morning," King said. He's thrilled with his commute time, and hopes nobody does any road "improvements" to mess it up.

Wasilla-to-Anchorage commuter Dan Slater said he'd like to be able to bypass Eagle River, where traffic backs up near on-ramps. He's not impressed with the idea of a Knik Arm bridge. "Fix the Eagle River area and forget the darn bridge," he said.

Ryan Cubillas, who lives near Boniface Parkway and DeBarr and works in the heart of Midtown, said: "One intersection that still annoys me is 36th and the New Seward Highway. I HOPE there are plans to improve this."

There are, kind of. It's part of a proposal to connect the Glenn and Seward Highways and make them more freeway-like. The overall project is stalled for lack of funding, but pieces may still get built.

Cubillas said he thinks Lake Otis and Tudor "has turned out really nice with the multiple turning lanes."

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Reach Rosemary Shinohara at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.